I bought this because I wanted a setup that let me just walk into the other room, plug in my guitar and earphones and play, and that also made it easy to record. I've been using this device almost every day for three weeks, and it has suited my needs perfectly.
The strongest point for me is the “form factor”. I only play with earphones in, and I really want my whole setup to be small enough to keep in my guitar bag for travelling. I was previously using a tiny headphone amp with an integrated plug (e.g. VOX AmPlug), but I found it surprisingly inconvenient: on a Telecaster-style guitar, these hang off the side of the guitar and make it uncomfortable to play if it's too close to your body; they spin around, so it is hard to orient oneself; they centre the weight from multiple cables on the guitar itself; and generally make it hard to see what you are doing. The ZOOM MS-80IR+ is also a small headphone amp, but because it is in pedal form, it avoids all these problems: it sits on the floor and gets out of the way of your hands and body; and you can easily see what you're doing thanks to the bright, clear screen. Particularly convenient is that you can do many common operations with just your feet, like activating the tuner, switching presets and bypassing the current amp, ambience or effect. Also, unlike many tiny headphone amps, you can fully operate the device without using a smartphone, which was critical for me.
The other thing is that USB-C port offers incredible convenience. By connecting a single cable to my laptop, it not only powers the pedal off my laptop's battery, but also immediately lets me record my guitar playing to my laptop in high quality, *and* hear any audio output from my laptop through the earphones connected to the pedal. This means I can easily consult tutorial videos, or listen to music and play along to accompany it, etc. Critically however, it is not a computer-centric experience: it relegates my laptop to a music player and a video recorder, and lets me only deal with my guitar and the pedal itself for the actual experience of playing. This makes me very happy.
Some particulars:
• The enclosure seems well-built.
• The user interface is very intuitive and easy-to-use. I didn't need to read the manual.
• The headphone output works well even with sensitive in-ear monitor earphones (Shure SE215 in my case), which is not something that can be taken for granted, as I've had problems with many consumer audio devices. With the ZOOM MS-80IR+'s output, the quality is comparable to my main audio interface (Steinberg UR22mkII), there is no noticeable noise, and the volume level can be set low enough (4%) to be comfortable.
• It has a great variety of different kinds of tones. I don't feel like I am stuck with one particular sound; you can get gentle jazz tones and exciting metal crunch, for example. I have been very satisfied with these, but as a novice I do not feel qualified to judge their quality.
• I haven't noticed any noise or interference issues, even at high gain; when the guitar is silent, the pedal output is silent, as it should be.
• Despite belonging to the ZOOM MultiStomp “MS” series, the effects capabilities are really very limited; you can only use one “amp” (includes a simulated cabinet), one “ambience” (a reverb with no configuration possible) and one “effect” at once, and the selection of “effects” is much smaller and less varied than on other MS series devices. It seems that ZOOM chose to prioritise the quality of the amp and cab simulation, rather than effect potential. You should not get this as a replacement for an effect pedal, it is a replacement for an amp.
